Phone: (956) 326-2471

Office: PH 314G

Teaching: 20th Century American Literature, Early American Literature, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Advanced Grammar

Research: 20th Century American Novel, Popular Culture, Food Studies

Education:

BA, MA in English: West Virginia University

PhD in English: Texas A&M University

Representative Scholarly Activities:

Publications:
“Introduction.” Inaugural issue of the Journal of Social and Ecological Boundaries. As guest editor: Spring, 2005.
“Inventing that Old-Time Style: Southern Authenticity in O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Journal of Popular Film and Television. Spring 2004 (32.1) 2-9.
“Do Large Italian-American Families Really Eat at the Olive Garden? Ethnic Food Marketing and the Consumption of Authenticity.” Studies in Popular Culture. April, 2002.

Presentations
“Folk on Film: Authentic Fixations.” 28th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference. Radford, VA: March 19, 2005.

“Gustatory Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Desire and Its Rewards in Food Films.” Joint 2005 Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS). Portland, OR: June 11, 2005.
Bloodshot Records and the Tradition of Performative Authenticity. At the Popular Culture Association National Conference: April, 2004.

“When You’re There, You’re Family: The Managed Slippage Between Eating Authentic and Eating Authentically” at the 2003 Joint Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society: June, 2003.

“Inventing that Old-Time Style: Southern Authenticity in O Brother, Where Art Thou? At the PCA/ACA 5th Congress of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico: October, 2001.

“Risking, ’each day, losing our forebears in forever’: Narrative, History, and Memory in Mason & Dixon” at Constructions of Memory in Contemporary American Literature in Nimes, France. June, 2000